Analytical Psychology - What Is It?

Analytical Psychology, or Jungian Psychology, as it is most popularly called, is a 'depth psychology' which draws on Psychiatry, Philosophy, Ethnology, Mythology, Arts and Literature, and ultimately, all sciences and fields of knowledge that can contribute understanding humankind, behaviour and mental health.

Since everything is part of human culture, all kinds of knowledge are integrated into Jung's depth psychology, and hence work combines the products and developments of some of the most brilliant minds of his epoch.

Dr Carl Gustav Jung remains one of the most prominent and influential minds in our world. His concepts are inserted in many fields of Psychology and Psychiatry, and a considerable number of them are part of the common vocabulary, as archetype, synchronicity, introversion and extroversion, persona and shadow.

The conceptualisation of the Self, Archetype, Collective Unconscious and the self-regulation of the psyche are a turning point on the development of psychotherapy . The psyche has a tendency to compensate for consciousness' unidirectional position, similar to a compensatory development of organs in organ inferiority.

This means that any unidirectional behaviour or attitude has a tendency to be compensated by the unconscious, as the psyche seeks to find a balance. The activity of the unconscious looks for self-regulation of the psychic apparatus, the conscious orientation is selective, demands direction and consecutively the exclusion of everything irrelevant.

In this way, consciousness is one-sided, and what was excluded now belongs to the personal unconscious. Jung differentiated the concept of the unconscious from Freud, and this difference changes considerably the psychotherapeutic understanding and conduct of the analysts oriented as either Freudian or Jungian.

Freud describes the unconscious as the instinctual psyche as the 'id', and the collective consciousness as 'super-ego', in which the individual is partly conscious and partly unconscious, because the contents are repressed. The 'ego' is the conscious part of the personality, and has to deal with the 'id' drives and the social conventions demanded by the “super-ego”.

Jung describes the personal unconscious as a more superficial layer of the unconscious, which derives from personal experiences. On a deeper layer rests the collective unconscious, which does not derive from the personal acquisition, but is inborn, universal, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals. The collective unconscious constitutes a common psychic substrate of a supra-personal nature which is present in every one of us.

The contents of the personal unconscious constitute the personal and private side of psychic life that, for one reason or another, pathological or not, are not in the consciousness. The contents of the collective unconscious, on the other hand, are known as archetypes and are represented by the opposite and complementary images of the symbols.

For Jung, archetypes are universal, archaic patterns and images, that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct. They are inherited potentials which are restored when they enter consciousness as images or manifested through behaviour or interaction with the outside world. They are autonomous and hidden forms, which are transformed once they enter consciousness and adopt a particular expression by individuals and their cultures.

The archetypes are 'numinous' contents, relatively autonomous. They cannot be integrated merely by rational means, as they require a dialectical procedure, a real coming to terms with them. In other words, the client needs to “dialogue” with them, in a kind of an inner colloquy, in which way the analyst can help as a facilitator, or taking the role of the transcendent function.

The main archetypes that structure the personality are Ego, Persona, Shadow, Anima, Animus and Self. Other archetypes are, of course, fundamental, and valuable tools to explain and understand the development of the personality, as well the analytical process: The Great Mother, The Great Father, The Child, The Hero, The Old Wise Man, and The Old Wise Woman.

Clinical work demands to know, as well, the concepts of Ego, Psychopathology and the Theory of Complex.

Solange Bertolotto Schneider

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